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As the Endowment Grows, GSE Board Appoints First Research Professors

June 2009

In the 2009-10 academic year the GSE will welcome its first two research professors: Prof. Massimo Motta (UPF-GSE) and Prof. Nezih Guner (UAB-GSE), both of them ICREA professors. The Board agreed to offer the appointments to these two professors at its meeting last November, and both have accepted the offer. The process of making new appointments, planned for next November’s meeting, is already in progress.

An investment in top talent

The creation of a category of research professors is at the core of the overarching strategic aim of the School’s research endowment. At the end of 2007, in order to achieve its long-term goal of increasing its critical mass of top scientific talent, the Barcelona GSE began to work towards the constitution of a research fund or endowment. The work followed the Scientific Council’s recommendation and the agreement of the School’s Board, with the goal of securing the strength, stability and sustainable independence of the Barcelona GSE research policy.

The initial amount of the endowment was 3 million euros, approved by the Congress in the General State Budgets of 2008. The Congress approved an additional 5.5 million euros for the GSE endowment in the budgets of 2009, bringing the current base amount of the endowment to 8.5 million euros.

Since the economic agreement of the GSE with its research professors is indefinite and will last throughout their affiliation with one of the founding academic bodies of the GSE (UPF, UAB, IAE-CSIC and CREI), the funds that support these appointments will come from the returns yielded by the endowment’s base, which is held in perpetuity by the School.

"One of the main goals of the Barcelona GSE is to support the on-going development of the research community of its four founding academic bodies," Dr. Eduard Vallory, GSE Director-General, said. "Our growing endowment will allow us to contribute to this endeavor through joint appointments of Research Professors of the highest caliber."

A track record of distinction

Research professors will be appointed among the tenured members of the four founding academic bodies of the Barcelona GSE with the objective of attracting new top scholars to tenured positions. An Appointment Committee comprised of the five individual academic members of the Barcelona GSE’s Board, headed by the Chairman, evaluates the scientific track record of each candidate before submitting its recommendations to the Board for final consideration. Only candidates with a scientific track record that makes them plausible tenured appointments in leading world departments are considered for these appointments.

About Prof. Massimo Motta

Prof. Massimo Motta is currently Professor of Economics at the Università di Bologna and is going to join the Department of Economics and Business of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra as an ICREA Professor, as well as a Barcelona GSE Research Professor. Before that, he was a professor at European University Institute, Florence, where he was also Head of the Economics Department (2003- 2005). Previously, he was Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (1992-2006), where he was also the first Director of the Master in Economics (1993-1998). He has collaborated on the launching of the MSc in Competition and Market Regulation of the Barcelona GSE as a Scientific Director.

He holds a PhD in Quantitative Economics from the London School of Economics and the Université Catholique de Louvain (1991), as well as an MA in Economics (Louvain) and a Laurea in Discipline Economiche e Sociali (Università Bocconi). He is a Fellow of the European Economic Association, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London) and at CESifo (Munich). Prof. Motta is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Competition Economists, of the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy at the European Commission, and of the Expert Academic Panel of Ofcom, London.

Prof. Motta's main areas of research are industrial organization and competition policy. He has advised companies and the European Commission in antitrust and merger cases. He has extensive experience in supervising doctoral dissertations, and his former students have obtained important positions in academia, consulting firms, and in competition and regulatory agencies. His work has been published in several leading international journals, and his book, Competition Policy: Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press), published in March 2004, is the standard international reference on the economics of antitrust.

About Prof. Nezih Guner

Prof. Nezih Guner is currently Associate Professor of Economics a the Carlos III University, and is going to join the Unit of Economic Analysis of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona as an ICREA Professor and a Barcelona GSE Research Professor. Previously, he taught Economics at Pennsylvania State University (1999-2006), and at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada, 2000-2001). He was a visiting researcher at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey in 1993-1994 and a member of Pennsylvania State University's Population Research Institute.

He holds a PhD and a Master in Economics from the University of Rochester (2000) and MA and BA in Economics from the Bogazici Universitesi, Istanbul, Turkey. He is Research Fellow of the Institute for Study of Labor (IZA) and Research Affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy research (CEPR).

His primary research interests are macroeconomics, economic demography, public economics and income distribution. In addition to several relevant publications, Prof. Guner has been invited to deliver presentations and others at venues such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the NBER Summer Institute, IZA (Bonn), and the annual meetings of the Society for Economic Dynamics in Paris, Prague, and Stockholm.

The GSE Board meets annually in November. The process of making new appointments, planned for next November’s meeting, is already in progress.